Former Tesco BWS boss heads up Majestic’s buying team

Majestic has appointed former Tesco BWS boss Rob Cooke to head up its buying team, as buying and merchandising director.

Cooke, who joined the wine specialist in April, will take on the role performed by trading director Richard Weaver, who left the company last year.

Cooke was at Tesco in the UK for four years, joining from its Turkey team as commercial operations director and commercial and strategic director before moving to become the head of BWS in August 2017. Prior to joining Tesco Turkey, he was at Sainsbury’s, most recently as head of buying, after five year as head of trading at Woolworths. He was replaced at Tesco by Jason Godley.

It is the latest change in the team at the wine specialist, which saw Majestic Wine UK retail boss Josh Lincoln head up the combined Majestic and Naked UK operation shortly after it announced the restructure and rebranding of the business as Naked Wines.

Bibendum’s Nadia Williamson was announced as a new buyer ed the team in April, following the departure of Head of Buying Cat Lomax and sSenior buyer Julie Buckley at the start of the year in moves unrelated to the restructure. 

Lomax left in order to take up a new role at Marks & Spencer.

The company also announced it had bolstered its top team with the appointment of US heavyweight John Walden as the new chairman as it confirmed that ‘advanced’ sale talks of the Majestic retail business were expected to close over the summer, with UK MD Josh Lincoln promising the retailer was “here to stay“.